Developed on PC, tested on PC, demoed on PC... and now finally playable on PC.

Fez

It's been almost a year since the initial release of Fez, the lovely retro-themed 2D platformer with a 3D twist. The game's development process was almost as complex as the game that eventually emerged, with developer Phil Fish famously polishing the game far past shininess and well into ludicrous territory. The love and time spent on Fez certainly shows: five minutes into the game, when the little blobby protagonist acquires the eponymous hat and gains the power to rotate his 2D world in a third dimension, it's such a momentous event that it reboots the entire world. The game is a layer-cake of puzzles piled on top of meta-puzzles, and it showcases the utter brilliance—and no small amount of manic intensity—of the developer.

However, the 3D fun has so far only been available to XBox 360 players on XBox Live Arcade. Phil Fish famously tweeted before the game's release that Fez is "a console game. for consoles. PCs are for spreadsheets." Fortunately, Fish had a change of heart (or is fed up with XBox Live's patching policy) and delivered some good news this morning for PC gamers who want to get in on the action: Fez is coming to Steam on 1 May, 2013.

The initial release will be for the Windows version of Steam, but Phil Fish revealed in his Reddit AMA today that there will also be an OS X version at some point (though whether that will also be available on Steam or standalone was not mentioned).

The game's slick but blocky graphics ooze retro charm, and the chiptune music manages to be appropriately period but also haunting at times. (My NES never really produced video or sound like this, as much as my memory insists that it did.) You guide your behatted protagonist through a series of increasingly complex puzzles which require the use of the fez's magical extradimensional world-rotating puzzles to solve. It's a deceptively simple gameplay mechanic with complex level design consequences.

Gaming Editor Kyle Orland noted in our original review that "...there are the many puzzles that I felt I could solve only if I was a mind reader with a direct connection to Phil Fish."

Microsoft

In fact, Fez's weakness is that it might be a little too polished. "Fez is not the kind of game that holds your hand and lays out the exact steps to finish its most frustrating puzzles," Orland continued. "Instead, it frequently throws you into rooms festooned with obscure symbology and cryptic pixel-art wall drawings, challenging you to figure out what exactly it wants from you."

Scattered through the game's levels are clues and messages, giving the obsessive or completionist-minded player an entire separate meta-game to wade through on top of the platform. It culminates in a final puzzle whose solution still remains somewhat of a mystery—it was "solved" more than a year ago via brute force, but the reasoning behind why the solution works is still unclear. One could easily envision Phil Fish, his fingers worn down to bloody nubbins after years of unending work on the game, laughing maniacally in front of his development computer as the endgame puzzle folds up on his screen like Lemarchand's box.

Whatever awaits, we look forward eagerly to playing the game on PC when it comes out in May.

Great news for Steam and Mac gamers. This is a wonderful, incredible game that is NOT to be missed by anyone. This is one of the very few games that feels like the vision of one or two people, not merely the product of a team (not that there's anything wrong with that). This is an experience I wish I could have for the first time all over again. I am envious of all those new players who get to dive in now for the first time.

I'm not sure that's a ringing endorsement when you have an in-game puzzle you have to brute force. Reminds me of some early adventure games.

It's not quite the same sort of in-game puzzle as the early adventure games. There are puzzles-upon-puzzles in Fez, and not all of them are required to be completed to finish the game. Please correct me, anyone, if I am mistaken, for I have only played Fez for a few hours, because it broke my brain

Phil Fish makes good games. He then says exceptionally stupid things as weird roundabout publicity for those games. He's like the indie-game equivalent of the RyanAir CEO that drums up free publicity every year by claiming they're looking into charging for restrooms on flights or planning to get rid of seats altogether. Much like the CEO of RyanAir, this behavior makes Phil Fish an asshole.

While this looks like a somewhat interesting game, just about everything I've seen or heard of Phil Fish, from his own mouth/fingers or from people who have interacted with him directly, makes him seem absolutely awful, and that would make a purchase of the game feel icky to me. I have a big enough Steam backlog that I won't want for games if I decide not to give the man any of my money.

I'm not sure that's a ringing endorsement when you have an in-game puzzle you have to brute force. Reminds me of some early adventure games.

There is only one puzzle that does this and it is outside of the story of the game. There is a logic as to why it needs to be brute forced presented in the game. It also is not needed to get any of the achievements.

The motive of the puzzle was probably to just challenge to the community, and I actually thought it brought the online community playing the game much closer together. It felt as though everyone was working together to unlock some ancient secret. I thought it was pretty cool, at least.

While this looks like a somewhat interesting game, just about everything I've seen or heard of Phil Fish, from his own mouth/fingers or from people who have interacted with him directly, makes him seem absolutely awful, and that would make a purchase of the game feel icky to me. I have a big enough Steam backlog that I won't want for games if I decide not to give the man any of my money.

Oh, wait, did I say Steam? I clearly meant Microsoft Excel.

I wanted to like him a lot when I watched Indie Game: The Movie, but... he made it very hard to root for him.

Fez is for consoles, and my money is not for Phil Fishs. End of Story.

Man this quote of Phil Fish in a previous article makes me think the guy either has no business sense or has no problem spouting inane BS:

Phil Fish wrote:

"We already owe Microsoft a LOT of money for the privilege of being on their platform," he said. "People often mistakenly believe that we got paid by Microsoft for being exclusive to their platform. Nothing could be further from the truth. WE pay THEM."

I hope this comment thread doesn't turn into another referendum on Phil Fish. The guy's a jerk. But this game is stellar. I can't blame anyone for not wanting to give their money to a jerk. But he's only talking. It's not like he's waging a political battle against human rights or something. The game is seriously not to be missed, and I'd hate for anyone to skip it becuase of Fish's comments.

There are plenty of jerky people whose music I enjoy and pay for, from Chuck Berry to Kanye West. If the game was merely above average, I wouldn't be vocal about this. But it's way, way better than that (IMO of course).

This game has always looked interesting, and I don't have an X-Box, so I've never been able to try it.However, I have such a huge backlog of games, that I probably won't pick it up unless it's super-cheap.Here's hoping it's part of a Humble Bundle someday.

I'd imagine a wired 360 controller will be required to play. I don't think they'd be able to emulate some of the more inventive puzzles with a keyboard/mouse or on-screen. I won't say more though because I'd spoil the game.

This game brought me fevered joy for 5 crazy nights. The in-game logic is complex but totally sensible and discoverable, and the elation upon understanding how certain things worked is practically indescribable. I felt compelled to play it until I solved everything I could solve, and then I turned to the internet for 3 final puzzles because I just had no patience left. I will live in everlasting shame knowing that.

The people who have some weird personal grudge against Phil Fish, well... feel free. It's your life. I can't understand avoiding art because of some perceived slight on the part of the artist, but I also freely acknowledge I have different priorities from most people.

Hopefully it will sell more copies on steam than it ever did on Xbox Live, driving home just how misguided the thinking was that consoles are collectively somehow superior to personal computers for gaming, or ever have been in the last decade. The worst raspberry blown at their fans in all this was hitching their cart to Microsoft, like that was ever going to end well.

The most innovative, interesting, experimental, and ambitious games have always targeted home computers. The most distilled, refined, populist, predictable, dialed-in games have always been published on the game consoles.

Hopefully it will sell more copies on steam than it ever did on Xbox Live, driving home just how misguided the thinking was that consoles are collectively somehow superior to personal computers for gaming, or ever have been in the last decade. The worst raspberry blown at their fans in all this was hitching their cart to Microsoft, like that was ever going to end well.

The most innovative, interesting, experimental, and ambitious games have always targeted home computers. The most distilled, refined, populist, predictable, dialed-in games have always been published on the game consoles.

I would bother listing all of the reasons you're wrong, but the way you worded your comment indicates I would be banging my head against a brick wall. I'm happy to leave you in your bubble, believing you're experiencing the best of everything while being cut off from experiences you don't understand in the least.

I would bother listing all of the reasons you're wrong, but the way you worded your comment indicates I would be banging my head against a brick wall. I'm happy to leave you in your bubble, believing you're experiencing the best of everything while being cut off from experiences you don't understand in the least.

Well, despite knowing better, I might as well try feeding this troll and see what happens.

My statement has nothing to do with "understanding," nor do I live in isolation or a bubble regarding some of the more interesting xbox360 and playstation3 online offerings; there's simply nothing about those platforms that lend themselves to exceeding the capabilities of mid-to-upper tier PC hardware or flexibility of distribution. Fixed spec hardware and traditional development/market forces back my comments.

You can wave your hands and throw smoke bombs, rhetorically speaking, but why don't you argue on the merits rather than trying to set up and knock down straw men?

After watching Indie Game: The Movie, I was pretty certain all of these people were completely insane. However, their games all seem to be great.

So who cares if this guy is an asshole or not? I want to play the acclaimed game he made, not hike through Alaska with him. So if this game comes to pc, I will probably buy it, because this does seem like the kind of title that deserves monetary endorsement, regardless of its creator.

I would bother listing all of the reasons you're wrong, but the way you worded your comment indicates I would be banging my head against a brick wall. I'm happy to leave you in your bubble, believing you're experiencing the best of everything while being cut off from experiences you don't understand in the least.

Well, despite knowing better, I might as well try feeding this troll and see what happens.

My statement has nothing to do with "understanding," nor do I live in isolation or a bubble regarding some of the more interesting xbox360 and playstation3 online offerings; there's simply nothing about those platforms that lend themselves to exceeding the capabilities of mid-to-upper tier PC hardware or flexibility of distribution. Fixed spec hardware and traditional development/market forces back my comments.

You can wave your hands and throw smoke bombs, rhetorically speaking, but why don't you argue on the merits rather than trying to set up and knock down straw men?

I was specifically addressing

Quote:

The most innovative, interesting, experimental, and ambitious games have always targeted home computers. The most distilled, refined, populist, predictable, dialed-in games have always been published on the game consoles.

I already sent a message to the 'technical support' contact on this site but it's possible that this might get quicker visibility: on the RSS feed for this item, a stray ^P snuck into the title of the article, which ends up breaking the feed for strict-validating RSS readers (such as anything based on SimplePie or MagpieRSS), and it also fails the W3C validator as a result. Just thought the author of the article might want to fix that.

The game is stellar. Stellar. Best game I have played since METROID on the NES, and for the same reasons. There are whole worlds within worlds and you cannot believe how cool it is to find them. I ate the game UP. I broke out graph paper for this game. I have about five pages of notes. I took notes. The mind reels. This game is so good I might buy it again, as I can capture and share proud moments on the Mac a lot easier than on the XBox. It's amazing.

Spoiler: show

I have two cubes left, and I can get them at ~1:30 AM on Wednesday. Which reminds me: start your game at a decent hour. I have two heart chunks as well. The one with the two clues and the monolith. I don't want answers, but button mashing worked for other heart chunk. It's not working here.

Lee Hutchinson / Lee is the Senior Reviews Editor at Ars and is responsible for the product news and reviews section. He also knows stuff about enterprise storage, security, and manned space flight. Lee is based in Houston, TX.